O.K. what's the ultimate gaming system?

mewso

Thinking of buying a new PC so if I was to take a system of PIII450 (because the deals are better than a 500), 17" monitor then how woul dyou fill in these blanks to create your ultimate system:-

Memory:- 64meg?, is 128 necessary?
Video Adapter:-
Sounds Card:-

I suppose the basic question is what do ye think is the best video and sound option out there.

M

LegacyUser

Get 128 ram cos you can never have too much ram ie system always has better performance with more ram
video ?? Well those TNT2s are supposed to kinda kick ass ( are they even out yet ?)
if youve that quake 3 crap( well it is crap ! Its not as good as either q1 or q2 but so long as its a game with people shooting people, noone complains ) in mind the voodoo 3 3xxx is fairly cool
as for sound ,dat Creative Labs LIVE soundcard is the WAN

Anyone else have some bits we can throw into this spec?

[This message has been edited by Mr_PeeWee (edited 17-05-99).]

regi

Muso, if you can afford to wait a month or a bit, I'd wait to see if the AMD K7 chip is all its made up to be. It should be cheaper than a PIII at the same speed, and for the first time, it should kick its ass for gaming performance!

As for other bits, I'd definately get the TNT2 - and they are out now. You can buy the standard 16 meg TNT2 cards in Electronic Boutique, and if you wait until the June 4th, they'll have the TNT2 Ultra cards too. And Peewee is right, the SB Live card ****in rocks, but you'd want to have a really good set of speakers to make it go well. I hear (boom tss) that the cambridge 5 speaker set is good.

As for ram, its dead cheap right now, so go out and buy 128 or 256 megs - along with monitor size, and hard drive space, you'll never regret getting the extra amount

Dan

mewso

Well regarding the waiting. Here at the SDCC, where I work they have agreed to give interest free loans to staff buying PCs up to £1500 so I have investigated and picked out a deal with Gateway. It's the following:-

Intel 450MHz Pentium III Processor
4 PCI, 1 shared PCI/ISA slot + 1 AGP
128MB SDRAM
Panasonic DVD-ROM III with Soft DVD
8.4GB Quantum Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Telepath Pro 56K Voice Modem
ATI RAGE PRO AGP 8MB 3D Graphics Accelerator
Sound Blaster Audio PCI 64D & Creative GCS200 Speakers
17" EV700 colour Monitor
Epson Stylus Colour 440 Printer

They're the main details and the one that jumps out is the Video Card as being crap but they don't offer any decent cards so I'll get that myself. Mind you Dell offer the TNT2 with their packages.
Anyway the total cost of this deal is
£1339.47 (inc. V.A.T.)

Not bad methinks.

M

ButcherOfNog

drop the modem and gain another 128M of ram. then get a good modem

128M should be no more than 140quid extra and the modem may be a winmodem, if so its only use is as a door stop. might be an idea to get more HD space as its cheap to upgrade to when buying the system, but costs alot more after you buy. and get a network card in it for qp2.

and do you really need a color printer? god i hate bundles. having said that I'd love a P3

Slosh

Yea - the Gateway modem is a Winmodem - avoid! Check out the Dell tho - I would b4 I'd go to Gateway!

mewso

I checked Dell too but their PIII450 comes with a Printer and scanner and when I up memory to 128 plus network card it all gets much more expensive. Think I'll settle for the above but I've gotten rid of the modem (have one anyway), upped the HD to 13gigs and added a 3COM PCI 3C900B 10Mb Network Card and I now have a price of £1327.37. An increase of memory to 256 would cost alot more than £140 extra so I'll live with 128meg. My only problem now is whether to buy a Voodoo3 AGP or Riva TNT2.
Should be able to get it next week with any luck. Woohoo!!!

M

tHE vAGGABOND

The gateway prices fell today (but no adds for a while)

Gateway PIII 500 with all the gateway good stuff minus the **** stuff (ATI, Modem and stuff)with decient 17" monitor, 128 ram, DVD and that kik ass BA speaker system bgateway do, yours for a shade over £1400, I used the savings to order a TNT2 and SB live today

woohoo

Hobbes

One thing I've noticed on the V3 3000 I got. It has "DVD-Assist" which makes a massive difference to the movies being viewed. Your DVD will be limited by your vid card.

tHE vAGGABOND

hope it works OK with my TNT 2

Helv

You should get rid of the dvd drive and just get a standard cd rom drive, when if ever are you going to watch a film on your pc, get ridof it and save yourself 60 quid. I got a PIII 450 from Dell and it kicks ass, same specs to teh one youre looking at. BTW ppl saying not to get a vid card with it, its integrated and so is the ****ty yamaha sound card. It'll do tho.
Cant wait to get a TNT2, any1 want to buy a playstation so i can fund it?

toil

hey musso,
go talk to that flavor lad ;-)

i'd wait for the tnt2 ultra card.

LegacyUser

Frig it Muso, go for the $26000 option!

http://shugashack.com/shackware/shackware_ballsout.html

Shinji

And don't listen to ppl telling you not to go for a DVD drive, since a fair few games have just been announced on DVD, as have other things....

Oh yeah and if you have a nice sound system (GW 2000 Boston Acoustics system is niiiccceeeee) then watching movies on the PC is pretty sensible, tbh.

Mata ne!
Rob

OSiriS

/me DRoooOOOooooLS

Shiminay

If it's any help Brian - here's the spec of the machine my bro bought a couple of months back...
Gateway G7 450 (PIII 450)
128 RAM
16meg TNT
SB AWE 64
13gig Hard drive
17" Monitor
Mid-sized tower (although he paid for a full size and is too dumb to return it)
Altec Lansing speakers (not sure about WATTs - but no sub-woofer)
36X CD-Rom drive
2X 2X 6X CD Re-Writer
Total: 1773 all in.

Replace the cd-rom and re-writer with DVD though and get a sub-woofer is my advice.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
homepage.tinet.ie/~davitt